


smoke and mirrors

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e03 Squeeze, Episode: s01e13 Beyond the Sea, Episode: s05e04 Detour, Episode: s05e12 Bad Blood, Episode: s06e03 Triangle, Episode: s06e10 Tithonus, F/M, Immortal Scully, Post-Episode: s10e06 My Struggle II, Post-I Want to Believe, Vignette, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s your truth, she thinks idly, and is surprised to find that she wants to know the answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	smoke and mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this one because i wanted to prove to myself that i could write something other than kidfic. it was inspired by this playlist i made (http://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/142515726943/playlist-title-cases-mulder-and-scully-have), and the episodes i used, some of which are some of my favorites. (some are not.)
> 
> the title came from the first song on the playlist, which i actually think is very x-files like, and even more so when i looked up the phrase, which means covering up the truth with misleading information. (thanks, google!) 
> 
> warning for overall darkness in section 8 (discusses the possibility of immortal scully, mulder's fake suicide in gethsemane). 
> 
> (forgive me of butchering of medical stuff. i suck.)

_ “I want to believe _

_ But all that I own _

_ Is it just smoke and mirrors?” - Smoke and Mirrors,  _ Imagine Dragons

**1.**

_ Pilot _

They told him, “We’re assigning you a new partner,” and meant  _ spy _ . He’s suspected this would happen. He’s been getting close. He’d say he was right on the brink of something, but it would probably have the same effect as saying the  _ Titanic  _ was unsinkable. 

Mulder hasn’t worked with another agent since Diana left. Almost a year. As soon as they’d told him the name, he’d read up on her. Dana Katherine Scully. Impressive background. He’d read her senior thesis on Einstein. She seems pretentious, intelligent with her use of large words. If she wasn’t supposed to spy on him, then he would probably end up being friends with her. 

Scully. The name reminds him of baseball, of games he’s listened to on stakeouts, plays echoing through the empty car. There wasn’t a picture included. He doesn’t know what she’ll look like. 

Mulder sets down his tweezers and flips up the edge of the thesis. He should put it away before she gets here, really. He sees the poster tacked up on the wall. I Want To Believe. Will she be a believer, he wonders. Probably not. It wouldn’t fit with their agenda.

Her picture is like a glare, a reminder of his goal, the end he has in sight. Samantha. He wonders if they would understand the loss, the feeling of guilt, of I-could’ve-done-something. Appealing to their human nature probably wouldn’t work. Not if they steal little girls from their homes and send nice, respectable FBI agents who write papers on Einstein to throw their career down the drain. Mulder lets the first page of the thesis fall closed. He can’t allow himself to get distracted. This is a bump in the road, he tells himself. Nothing more.

There’s the sound of knuckles against wood. “Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted,” he calls out. 

  
  


**2.**

_ Pilot _

The truth was a trivial thing, she decides, drumming her fingers against her carry-on bag in her lap. What was the truth about how a girl in a wheelchair could be struck down by a car while running across the road, how a boy who was practically comatose could carry a girl through the woods? What was the truth about Mulder’s sister. She watches him, half asleep in the seat next to her, the fading sunlight playing across his face. 

“Mulder,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry about… coming to your room the other night. I overstepped. It was inappropriate.” It hadn’t been uncomfortable at the time, but ever since the excitement of the case died down, she’s mused on it with some embarrassment. Even now, red spreads over her face as she thinks about it.

“Hmm?” He jolts out of sleep, and smiles easily. “Don’t worry about it, Scully.”

It’s strange to hear that, her father’s name singled out and by itself. She’d heard her parents referred to as “Captain” and “Mrs.” Scully enough. She had been Agent Scully plenty before, and Dana for even longer. But Scully, by itself… there’s something in the way he says it, his voice carrying the two syllables. “I’m actually glad we got to talk,” he continues. 

Despite herself, she smiles. “Me, too.”

He falls back asleep easily. She knows next to nothing about his personal habits, but she can already tell he likes to sleep on airplanes. She’s not sure why he chose to sit with her this time, but she’s almost glad he did. She would guess that he does trust her, even a little. 

When the sun is sunk and they’re minutes away from Washington, she looks up at his face, slack in sleep. _ What’s your truth, _ she thinks idly, and is surprised to find that she wants to know the answer. 

  
  


**3.**

_ Squeeze _

He is almost stunned by her defense of him. To one of her friends, no less. He’d listened to her message after getting home.  _ I am furious, _ she’d said good-naturedly. Mulder didn’t expect this from her, didn’t expect to like her so much, or for her to like him. She should hate him, really. It was his pursuit of Tooms that prompted the attack. 

The phone rings after he’s been home an hour, and he answers immediately. “Sorry,” Scully says on the other end. “Did I wake you?”

“I was awake,” he says. Secretly, he is glad to hear her voice, leaking through the tiny speaker and filling his ear with its warmth. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says immediately. “It’s just, I… couldn’t sleep.” There is some slight anxiety lining her voice. Guilt rushes in like a river, and he pulls at a loose thread on his couch. 

“I could come and get you,” he offers. This is an unspoken awkwardness there, a a silence he rushes to fill with, “You hungry, Scully?”

He takes her to a diner he enjoys on occasion after a long work day. She orders pancakes at his suggestion. (“They make them good here.”) She asks about any more cases in the future. 

“What do you think?” he asks after she tries a bite.

Scully offers him a smile that rivals the too-bright fluorescent light over their heads. “I’ve got to say, it's a lot better than livers.”

Mulder laughs. Their fingers brush together as they reach for the syrup. 

  
  


**4.**

_ Beyond the Sea _

She’s always had a close relationship with death. It feels much too close now, seeping in through the walls and under the door. Her father’s ashes were scattered into the water. He’d always been one with the sea, it seemed. She traces lines on Mulder’s palm and listens to the rhythmic beep of the monitor. 

_ Daddy, you saw death, didn’t you. What was it like? Did you ever feel someone bleeding out beneath you? Give them your coat to keep them warm? _

They hadn’t been as close since her childhood years, but Scully feels the loss like a gap in her chest, that she can’t call him and ask these questions.  _ But you could talk to him again, _ Mulder’s voice prompts her in her head. She pushes it away, and wonders when she had the sound of it memorized. 

Attend Boggs’ execution. It would be easy. But what, what if he’s lying? What if giving in is the wrong thing, what if he’s just trying to get to her? She’s trying to tell herself that there is no unfinished business between herself and her father, but there will always be unfinished business. She will always want more time. They deserved more time, really. Whatever one is given, it’s never enough. 

The doctors said he was stable, and he’d be fine, and really, he could wake up any minute, would you like to sit with him. But what if he isn’t, what if something happens and Mulder dies, too, and she’s looking for closure from two of the dead. Scully shivers and clutches at his hand a little tighter. 

Death is everywhere, surrounds everything, and maybe that’s an over-dramatic, poetic way of looking at it, but she isn’t sure she wants to watch another death. The idea of executions had always been eerie to her. Awaiting your death. Walking to it. She doesn’t pity Boggs, she’d threatened to do it herself, but now Mulder is stable, they said. And she doesn’t want to watch yet another person leave this world. 

_ Jim Summers will be dead soon, _ she reminds herself.  _ You need to stay focused.  _ It was all meant to be a distraction anyway, this case. She couldn’t have known… 

Mulder’s hand moves beneath hers. She looks down at him immediately, surveying him for bad signs. “Mulder,” she says, feeling a smile of relief tugging at the corners of her mouth. “How do you feel? Do you want some water?”

He nods, and she stands, her fingers sliding through his as she reaches for a small plastic cup. After drinking, he clears his throat, and says, “Thanks,” his voice a familiar medical rasp. She goes to take his hand again and stops herself, fingers brushing the side of the bed. 

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he says after a minute.

“For what?”

“I’m guessing this isn’t how you wanted to spend your New Year’s.”

She doesn’t even know what day it is. They’ve all run together lately. “I think in that regard, Mulder, I turned out a little better than you,” she says in a poor attempt at humor.

“Let’s call it a tie,” he says.

She smiles, just a little. “I should get the doctor,” she says, and stands. 

She’s halfway out of the room before he says it again. “Dana?”

Scully turns to look at him. It’s still strange to hear him call her that. If it were any other situation, she might reply with a  _ yes, Fox? _ just to see what he’d do. 

“Thanks for the jacket,” he says, and means more.

Her father is dead, and she has a kidnapper to find, but there is one less spirit for Boggs to taunt her with. “Anytime, Mulder,” she says. 

  
  


**5.**

_ Detour _

She hums  _ Joy to the World  _ under her breath. It'd always been a song she enjoyed, although she's sure her tone deaf rendition didn't live up to it. As a child, she'd referred to it point-blank as “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog”. She hadn't liked confusing it with the hymn. 

She might've been bitter any other time, at a chance to spend some not-monster infested time with Mulder being skewed, but this isn't is bad as it might come across, really. Scully enjoys the woods, the cacophony of animals and the endless span of trees, even if mothmen or something like them lingered. And she enjoys having Mulder sprawled across her lap, enjoys the shared warmth and the assurance that he is still okay, even if he'd made her sing. 

One blink of the eye and she is back in a hospital bed, dying with Mulder's lips lingering against her hand, as if they were caught up in some long-forgotten era.  _ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me…  _ the verse was one from the Bible, and Scully knows from her faith that it refers to God, but some small part of her can't help but make the comparisons between her and Mulder. She'd been in the shadow of death many times and he'd been with her, pulled her back.

“Scully?” he mumbles suddenly and she starts; she had thought he was asleep. “You stopped singing.”

“I ran out of song, Mulder,” she says. “Any requests?”

He pauses as if considering it seriously, blinking sleepily. “Shaft?”

“No, Mulder,” she says firmly, though not without humor. “Not Shaft.”

“Hey, Scully?” He catches at her sleeve. “You underestimated your singing voice.”

She doesn't believe him, but she pretends she does. She starts  _ Joy to the World  _ again. Her voice catches on  _ joy to you and me.  _ Mulder really is asleep at this point. 

  
  


**6.**

_ Bad Blood _

Mulder had hated Lucius Hartwell for other reasons earlier, including the fact that he'd sent Mulder on a ride attached to the back of a trailer, and Scully's blatant attraction to him. But now he hates him on the basis of his drugging Scully. He's lucky that she wasn't bitten. 

Scully pokes the discarded breadsticks from the night before with the toe of her shoe. “Was this an attempt at defense by a cross or by garlic?”

She's still annoyed. It's been an interesting couple of days. None of this would've happened if she hadn't developed a craving for pizza. While doing an autopsy. Who does that? Dana Scully, apparently. “We should probably get out of here,” Mulder says. “In case the vampires come back.”

“Maybe that's what I want,” she sighs. “So we can give Skinner something definitive.”

“So, you're admitting it was vampires?”

She gives him a look that shuts him right up. He checks her neck again as she brushes past him to get in the car. Stupid buck-toothed sheriff. He should've figured out that the sheriff was a vampire, should've seen that no one is polite enough to pick up scattered sunflower seeds. No, not in this day and age. Didn't he read something about vampires having some sort of attraction aura around him, which would explain Scully's infatuation with him, she wouldn't… 

They drive until trailer parks are far behind them, and Mulder asks if she is hungry. They stop at a bakery, and he offers to go in. Back in the car, he hands her a bagel. “ _ Real _ cream cheese,” he tells her.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Mulder.” She takes a bite and motions to his shoes. “By the way, your shoelaces are untied.”

They drive in silence until they are almost to the airport. Mulder looks over at her again. “Scully?”

Her voice is taut. “Yes, Mulder?”

“I’m glad you’re not drained of blood.”

“Me, too.” 

For a second, he’s not sure if she means she is glad that he is not drained of blood, or that she’s not. When they get out of their car in the parking lot, he flings a handful of sunflower seeds with frustration. 

“Mulder, what the hell?” 

“I had to check. Make sure we weren’t followed.”

Scully snorts, and some of the tension - though not a lot - leaves her face. “Come on, vampire slayer.” Her hand tugs a little at his jacket sleeve, and he skates the seeds aside with his foot and follows her.

  
  


**7.**

_ Triangle _

_ Oh, brother.  _

If he were a character in some other story, he might run after her and tell her that he meant it. But in all honesty, he's a bit embarrassed now. It seems like he can only confess his feelings in moments of distress. It's too late to do anything normally or properly. 

He meant it, but he can't tell her, because he'd ruined her life, really, given her to the Consortium multiple times, practically gift wrapped her. He can't mean it. He can’t afford to. She doesn't deserve to be chained to a man who will only bring destruction into her life. Maybe if he could walk away, but he can't, he can't. He can't ask her because she doesn't deserve it, even if she loved him back.

_ But she might…  _

He thinks of the other Scully, with her wine colored dress and her curled hair and her cocky attitude. Her defense of him, a man she didn't know. Or did she. He'd never even asked her name. Maybe it's better if she stays Scully in his mind, untouchable by the past or the future. He'd kissed her. He wants to kiss the real Scully, uninterrupted, bees be damned. 

She comes back to his room later, saying, “Hey, Dorothy, you feeling any better?” He thinks about kissing her as he smiles and jokes with her about Oz and the prospects of dreams.  _ You saved the world,  _ he thinks.  _ You saved me. _

  
  


**8.**

_ Tithonus _

Immortality, or the idea of it, is a funny thing. She’d been asked once, if she’d want immortality, during a game of  _ Would You Rather.  _ Scully can’t remember the other option. She just remembers saying yes. 

“Hey, Mulder,” she’d said earlier. They’d been splitting a bag of chips on the surface of her hospital bed, staining the sheet with grease. “Have you ever solved a case about immortality before?”

He’d met her eyes, unsure of what she meant. “No,” he’d said cautiously, like he didn’t want to upset her. “Why do you ask?”

“I guess I wanted to know if you believed in it.”

She’d told him what had happened, what Fellig had said before he died, and his eyes went wide, and his hand enclosed her wrist gently. “Scully, no,” he said. Her fingers had been warm against her skin. She’d been cold since the bullet had gone through her.

_ If I can’t die, that means I’ll never see Missy and Dad again.  _

She should be asleep. Her recovery was quick, that’s true, but pain still shoots through her when she moves. Moonlight streams in through the blinds on the window. It almost resembles spilled milk. Mulder sleeps with his head resting against the bed. She doesn’t know how he got in this position. It looks uncomfortable.

Fellig’s words are still echoing in her head.  _ I wanted to look up my wife. It bothered me I couldn't remember her name.  _ She doesn’t understand this. How could someone forget the name of someone they love? She can’t imagine ever forgetting her mom, or her siblings, or Emily, painful as it may be, or…

Scully shivers. She looks down at him. The idea of his death is terrifying enough. That would be obvious. The idea of his death has terrified her ever since she felt his blood underneath his hand, and shouted at an inmate in his cell while her father’s words rang in the back of her mind. She doesn’t want to think of his death, even if it is inevitable. But the idea of never being able to follow is a fathomless pit. What if. What if.

_ Love lasts 75 years, if you're lucky. You don't want to be around when it's gone. _

Love. He’d told her he loved her while looking up at her from a hospital bed with wide eyes. He’d almost kissed her in a hallway. He’d blamed himself for her cancer, faked his death to look for her cure, and she’d told them that it was him. That he’d killed himself.

Scully is almost sure that no one would have a problem believing it. After what she told him, about her cancer, that he’d commit suicide out of grief. She’d never pondered it herself. She couldn’t let herself believe it, that he loved her that much, to end it all. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. The idea of it was too terrifying. But what if he had? She fingers her cross. Oh, God, what if he had?

“Mulder,” she whispers, but he doesn’t awaken. It’s funny, with herself on the cusp of death, that she is terrified of Mulder’s death instead. She reaches out, ignoring the jab of pain, and brushes her fingers along his pulseline. Just to check.

_ Hey, Scully? I love you. _

_ Love lasts 75 years, if you're lucky. You don't want to be around when it's gone. _

She can almost picture herself, years later but unchanged, and unable to remember Mulder’s name. Maybe her younger self would’ve wanted this, to not know anything about Fox Mulder. But any part of her that thought that he would be the death of her faded quickly. She can’t imagine it. 

She hadn’t believed him. She wishes she had. She remembers the lover’s pact.  _ I’d do it, _ she thinks. _ I would _ . 

“Mulder,” she whispers again. “I love you.” She waits, fingers lingering against the throb of his pulse, but he doesn’t wake up. 

  
  


**9.**

_ I Want To Believe _

She is almost home. Surgery is a tiring thing, and she still feels half-haunted by the process. It’s somehow very different and exactly the same from autopsies. And besides, she hasn’t conducted an autopsy in years.

Post-case, she’d always been tired, too. But she hadn’t been on this case. She can’t chalk up her tiredness to chasing head-severing kidnappers, at least not completely. Mulder is the one who threw himself completely into the case, just like he was always able to. 

“If you have any doubts, any doubts at all, call off that surgery, and we’ll get out of here,” he’d said. But she hadn’t called it off. She wonders if the offer still stands. It probably does. Mulder was always the type to forgive easily. He forgave her for shooting him, for God’s sake. He forgave her for William. 

She opens the gate and pulls in up the long driveway. Their squatty house is there, nestled in a clump of pines. She’d never pictured herself for one who would end up out in the wilderness. Mulder’s not in his office. He’s waiting for her out of the front porch. She throws the car door open. She is home.

  
  


**10.**

_ My Struggle II _

Sirens echo around them. Scully can see the cruel irony in this. There's no saving them from the end of the world. The roads are mostly clear back here, and she maneuvers the car precariously while trying to dial Skinner again. They need records. It may be Mulder’s only hope. 

Agent Miller is across the backseat of the car, shallow breaths filling the empty sounds. Mulder's breaths are further apart, quieter. She wonders if they'll cheat death this time. Really, they don't even know where William is. He could be anywhere. What if…

“You're not gonna die, Mulder,” she says, mostly to reassure herself.

He opens his eyes slightly. “Scully,” he starts.

He should've taken her with him. He might have had more of a chance that way. 

“You're not going to die,” she says again. She reaches out and grabs his hand. “You're not.”

People are shouting. A window shatters beside them. Scully swerves to avoid running over some wayward children. She probably needs both hands for driving, but she doesn’t want to let go of Mulder. She wants to tether him to this world.

They’d almost died too much, but they’d pulled each other back, and she wonders about promises of immortality that she hadn’t really taken seriously in years, even joked about while tapping her fingers against his tie, but even if she is immortal, they can’t take Mulder yet. It’s too soon.

He’s unconscious, but she clumsily squeezes his fingers and whispers, “You’re not going to die.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to imdb for quotes and to wikipedia for episode information. also, thanks to the artists of the songs from the playlist that inspired this. 
> 
> (sorry about the 'dana' in four, i've just always loved that he calls her that in beyond the sea.)


End file.
